Instruction to Authors

Instruction to Authors

Aims and scopes

The journal of Community Health research (JCHR) is a peer review quarterly journal and publishes original papers in the areas of basic and biomedical sciences with special approach to disease prevention & community health promotion. The journal welcomes to all researchers working in the different fields of health.

Editorial policies

This journal defines an author as a person who has made a substantive contributions to design of the work, or to analyze or interpret of data; and to draft or revise it; and to verify the approval of the version to be published and to agree for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. Those who do not meet at least one of the above criteria should be acknowledged.

Author list and their order should be finalized by all the authors prior to first submission. After this step, journal could not accept any addition or changes. One author as a corresponding author should be responsible for:

All communications

Uploading all submissions

Revisions of the work

Submitting a brief description of all contributions to the manuscript in the title page

Disclosing any information on prior or duplicate publication or submission elsewhere of any part of the work

In this journal, there is no limitation in authorship numbers for original articles. In case report, editorial and letter to editor, excessive authorship (more than 3 authors) should be avoided.

Copyright

Open access agreement

Upon submitting an article, authors are asked to indicate their agreement to abide by an open access Creative Commons license (CC-BY). Under the terms of this license, authors retain ownership of the copyright of their articles. However, the license permits any user to download, print out, extract, reuse, archive, and distribute the article, so long as appropriate credit is given to the authors and the source of the work. The license ensures that the article will be available as widely as possible and that the article can be included in any scientific archive.

Submission

The manuscript should be submitted to journal office along with the completed copyright form by author(s) and a cover letter to the editor in chief via email attachments jhr.ssu@gmail.com (alternative email: jhr@ssu.ac.ir) or through online submission at journal website.

Cover letter signed by the author(s) must be attached indicating the manuscripts have not been previously published or submitted for publication in other journals. Also, full name, affiliation, academic degree, postal address, telephone, fax number and email address should be indicated. On the other hand, conflicts of interest should be declared obviously in the cover letter. Before submission, registration has to be done at journal website by the corresponding author.

Cover Letter

In the Cover Letter all of the authors must declare their agreement on submitting the manuscript to JCHR​, ​furthermore Cover Let​t​er should identify corresponding author and his/her contact information (address, telephone and fax numbers and e-mail address)

Language and style

All submitted manuscripts should be in English with Persian Abstract. Nonnative English speakers may be advised to seek professional help with the language. All materials should be typed double line spacing numbered page with Times New Roman font (size 11). Abbreviations should be standardized and used just in necessary cases, after complete explanations at the first usage.

Types of acceptable articles

A manuscript can be classified under one of the following categories:

Original article

Review article

Short communication

Letter to the editor

Case report

Preparation of manuscript

Original article

It should not exceed 7000 words and they should have the following format:

Title page: Title page of the manuscript should include the title of the manuscript; authors' names and affiliations; name of the institution/university where the work was done; and complete mailing address, telephone and email address of the corresponding author. This page should be in a separate page with no number. First character of all words in the manuscript title must be written in capital form with exception of prepositions and conjunctions words.

Abstract: Abstract should be structured providing Background, Methods, Results and, Conclusion altogether should be in the range of 200-300 words.

Introduction: Introduction should provide a background and specifies the research objective of the study or observation. This section must emphasize the purpose and the rationale for the study. It should neither review the subject extensively nor should it have data or conclusions of the study.

Methods: Materials and methods must indicate clearly the steps taken to acquire the information. It should be detailed. Repeating the details of standard techniques is best avoided. The software used for statistical analysis and description of the actual method should be mentioned.

Results: Results should be presented in chronological sequence in the text, table and figure. The results should not be obtained from elsewhere. Table and illustrations have to be cited in order they appear in the text using Arabic numerals (more details have been mentioned in below).

Discussion: Discussion should emphasize the new and important aspects of the study. Possible explanations for these findings should be mentioned.

Conclusion: In this section, overall conclusion of the author(s) from the research, the limitation of the work and the implications of the finding for future research should be noted.

Acknowledgment: Acknowledgments should be mentioned for any technical help or general, financial, and material support or contributions that need to be acknowledged.

References: All manuscripts should be accompanied by relevant references. The Reference should provide the following information as stated in the presented models as follows:

References should be numbered sequentially as they appear in the text according to the Vancouver style. When citing authors in the text, acknowledge only the first author where there are three or more authors, e.g. Williams et al (1) stated that.... Where there are two authors cite both, e.g. Jones and Smith (2) reported that.... Citations in the reference list are to be arranged by number in the following format including punctuation. In case of referencing to publications in non-English language the author(s) should indicate the original language of publication in bracket; for example [Persian].

Jafari F, Beladian-Behbahan SE, Samadpour M, et al. Application of the stages of change model to dairy consumption among students of Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences. Journal of Shahrekord University of Medical Science. 2014; 15(6): 65-74. [Persian]

Chapter in a book: Author(s) of chapter. Title: sub-title of chapter. In: Author(s) (or editors) of the book. Title: sub-title of book. Place of publication: publisher; Year; page numbers.

Inclusive page numbers should be given for all references. Print surnames and initials of all authors when there are six or less. In the case of seven or more authors, the names of the first six authors followed by et al should be listed.

References to papers accepted for publication, but not yet published, should be cited as such in the reference list.

The author is responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the references and for their correct textual citation.

Tables: In limited numbers should be submitted with the captions placed above.Each table should be numbered consecutively with Roman numerals and typed double-spaced, including all headings. Verify tabular statistics to make sure they tally and match data cited in the text. Do not submit tables as pho­tograph.

Figures: Should be in limited numbers, with high quality art work and mounted on separate pages. The cap­tions should be placed below. The same data should not be presented in tables, fig­ures and text, simultane­ously.

Illustrations: Three copies of all figures or photographs should be included with the submitted manuscript. Photographs must be high-contrast, glossy, black and white prints, unmounted and untrimmed, with preferred size of 10 x 15 cm. Color transparencies or photos will be accepted at the discretion of Editorial Board. Figure number, and name of senior author, should be written on the back of each illustration. Written permission must accompany any photograph in which the subject can be identified or any illustration that has been previously published. All illustrations must be numbered as cited in the text in consecutive numeric order.

Abbreviations: Abbreviations that are unavoidable in the abstract must be defined at their first mention there. Also, abbreviations should be explained throughout the manuscript.

Clinical Trial Registration

From January 2010, all of the Clinical Trials must be registered in Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (www.IRCT.ir), in order to be considered for publication. This includes all of the clinical trials performed inside Iran even if they register in other registration sites. The clinical trials performed abroad, could be considered for publication, if they register in a registration site approved by W.H.O.

According to the International Committee of Medical journal Editors (ICMJE) a Clinical Trial is any research study that prospectively assigns human participants or groups of humans to one or more health-related interventions to evaluate the effects on health outcomes.

The registration number of the trial and the name of the trial registry must be mentioned at the end of the abstract.

Review article

It should be prepared according to one of the following styles:

Systematic reviews: This kind of manuscripts should be in form of meta-analysis, meta-synthesis or without statistical analysis. These manuscripts contain original articles’ parts. They should contain 2500-7000 words.

Non systematic reviews: This kind of manuscripts should be written by researchers who are expert in the related field. Different parts of such articles include abstract (with no structure), introduction, discussion, and conclusion. They should contain at least 25 references and the range of 3000-10000 words including the references and captions.

Short communication

It can be in form of original article, systematic review or ongoing research which reports its interesting findings. The parts in this type of articles are like those of original one except that ‘Materials and methods’ section should has not any subtitle. These kinds of manuscripts are smaller and prepared in minimum 1500 and maximum 2500 words.

Letter to the editor

It should be about criticism of previous articles in this journal or the others, criticism or review over books, analysis of a related topic with community health . These manuscripts need no structure and have not abstract. But, the total words number should be at maximum 2000 including references and the references not exceeding more than 10.

Case report

This kind of manuscript should include abstract, keywords, introduction, case report, discussion, conclusion, conflicts of interest, acknowledgment, and references. Case report should have 1500-2500 words. The title should include the words ‘case report’ as well as a description of the reported phenomenon (e.g., reporting of new and emerging community health problem). Three to five key words should be provided.

Editorial

These manuscripts need no structure and have not abstract. But, the total words number should be at maximum 2500 including references and the references not exceeding more than 20.

Conflict of interest

Submitting a manuscript must be accompanied with a statement from the authors disclosing all financial and personnel relationship that might bias their work, if any. Besides, they are requested to evident whether impending conflicts do or do not exist. A separate page should cover this proclamation and if there are further details, could be mentioned in covering letter. If an organization encompasses any financial interest in the outcome of the study, the authors are appealed to provide a declaration that has full excess to all data in the study and take complete responsibility for the integrity of data and the accuracy of data analysis.

Ethical guidelines

All studies must be approved by the relevant Ethics Committee/ Institution review boards of the respective institutions. Informed consent of the patients participating in the study should be under‌taken. The study itself should follow the ethical standards of the Helsinki Declaration, as revised in 2013 and available at:

Ethical considerations in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation must be addressed in the ‘Materials and methods’ or 'Acknowledgment' section, if necessary. The journal will not consider any manuscriptwhich is ethically unacceptable. It is the responsibility of the authors/contributors to obtain permissions for reproducing any copyrighted material. Evidence for approval by a local Ethics Committee (for both human as well as animal studies) must be supplied by the authors on demand. The related items should be inserted under the ‘Materials and methods’ section. A copy of the permission must accompany the manuscript. As mentioned previously, conflicts of interest should be declared obviously in each manuscript.

MisconductScientific misconduct includes fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism with the intent to deceive by the authors. Honest error or differences in interpretation are not considered misconduct. Breaches of publication ethics include but are not limited to: failure to reveal financial conflicts of interest; omitting a deserving author or adding a noncontributing author; misrepresenting publication status in the reference list; self-plagiarism without attribution; duplicate or redundant publication; and inclusion of one or more sentences verbatim from another source without citing the original source and putting the sentence(s) in quotation marks.

JCHR takes seriously its responsibility to ensure scientific integrity and will pursue any allegations of misconduct. The JCHR editors adhere to the COPE Code of Conduct, which can be found at http://publicationethics.org/resources/code-conduct.

Plagiarism
Submission of a paper implies that it reports unpublished work and that it is not under consideration for publication elsewhere. If previously published tables, illustrations or text are to be included, then this should be clearly indicated in the manuscript and the copyright holder's permission must be obtained. Previously published material can be cited in a later review or commentary article, but it must be indicated using quotation marks if necessary.

Plagiarism of text from a previously published manuscript by the same or another author is a serious publication offence. Small amounts of text may be used, but only where the source of the material quoted is clearly acknowledged. Fraudulent data or data stolen from other authors is also unethical and will be treated accordingly. Any alleged offence is considered initially by the Editorial Team.

Once approved to be published in the journal, the manuscript cannot be published elsewhere (even local journals). The copyright form should be filled and signed by all the authors, and then scanned and emailed by corresponding author to the journal office (jhr.ssu@gmail.com).

Complaints Procedures

This procedure applies to complaints about the policies, procedures, or actions of The EHJ Editorial Board. We welcome complaints as they provide an opportunity and a spur for improvement, and we aim to respond quickly, courteously, and constructively.
Our definition of a complaint is as follows:

The complainant expresses his or her expression of unhappiness as a complaint.

We infer that the complainant is not simply disagreeing with a decision we have made or something we have published (which happens every day) but thinks that there has been a failure of process; for example, a long delay, a rude response, or a severe misjudgment.

The complaint must be about something that is within the responsibility of The JCHR editorial board - content or process.

How to Make a Complaint

The best way to reach us is by email. Complaints should ideally be made to the person the complainant is already in contact with over the matter being complained about. If that is not appropriate, please email Jhr@ssu.ac.ir

Whenever possible, complaints will be processed by the relevant member of the Editorial Board. If that person cannot deal with the complaint, it will be referred to the appropriate section editor or the executive editor.

Complaints that are not under the control of the JCHR Editorial Board will be sent to chairman of the JCHR.

All complaints will be acknowledged within seven working days.

If possible, a full response will be made within four weeks. If this is not possible, an interim response will be given within four weeks. Further interim responses will be provided until the complaint is resolved.

If the complainant is not happy with the resolution, s/he can ask for the complaint to be forwarded to the Ethics Committee at School of Public Health at Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences.

If the complainant remains unhappy, complaints should be forwarded to the Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences Ethics Committee, whose decision is final.

If a complainant remains unhappy after what the university Ethics Committee's final decision, the complainant may complain to The Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE). COPE publishes a code of practice for editors of scientific, technical, and medical journals http://www.publicationethics.org. It will consider complaints against editors but only once a journal's own complaints procedures have been exhausted.

Revision
Manuscripts may be returned to the corresponding author for modification of the scientific content and/or for language corrections. Revised manuscript and a letter listing point-for-point response to the reviewers must be submitted to the editor and must be accompanied by a copy of the original version. Suggestion by the editor about resubmission does not imply that a revised version will necessary be accepted. If a manuscript that is returned to the authors for modification is not resubmitted within two months it will be regarded as having been withdrawn and any revised version received subsequently will be treated as a new manuscript and the date of receipt will be altered accordingly. Authors who resubmit a manuscript that has previously been rejected must provide the original manuscript and a letter explaining in detail how the manuscript has been modified. Accepted manuscripts become the property of this journal.

Proofs

A computer printout will be sent to the corresponding author to be checked for only typographical errors and other essential small changes before publication in order to avoid any mistakes. Major alternations to the text cannot be accepted at this stage. Proofs must be returned to the editor within 7 days of receipt.

Page charges

There is no page charge for publication in this journal.

Advertising policy

The journal does not carry advertising, neither print nor online.

Submission requirements

Submit only the final version of the manuscript. · The file should be in Microsoft Word. · Provide the printout of the manuscript that exactly matches the disk file. File names must be clearly indicating the contents of each file.

Owned and published by : Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences and Health Services

Support: This journal is supported by Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences and Health Services. It is an Academic Journal.

Pay charges: Journal of Community Health Research is an open-access journal. There are no charges for publication in this Journal. Therefore article is completely free of charge either in review or publishing phase.

Peer review process: All manuscripts are considered to be confidential. They are peer reviewed by at least 2 anonymous reviewers selected by the Editorial Board or assigned to external reviewers. The corresponding author is notified as soon as possible of the editor decision to accept, reject, or require modifications.Copyright:open access agreement: Upon submitting an article, authors are asked to indicate their agreement to abide by an open access Creative Commons license (CC-BY). Under the terms of this license, authors retain ownership of the copyright of their articles. However, the license permits any user to download, print out, extract, reuse, archive, and distribute the article, so long as appropriate credit is given to the authors and the source of the work.